Breaking down gender roles, one role at a time.

Links of Great Interest: Attack of the… flying fruit???

You guys… I’m really sorry to be so behind on posts. Remember my amazing safe house? With the garden at the center? I dunno, guys. Everything’s gone all weird again, and I’m not sure how we’ll even make it through the summer. We built our own prison: zombies on the outside, hungering for our brains, and these… walking, talking, evil… malevolences??? on the inside. Ms Sprinkles hisses and hides when she hears them creaking about. Mostly I just try to avoid eye contact. Any harvesting is furtive and fast.

In other news, here are the dispatches I’ve gotten from our regular readers. Please, guys, check in! I need to know there’s a world beyond the decrepit walls of this school.

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Comments

I don’t think I can even quantify my sheer hate for that Lara Croft thing.

Lara Croft was one of the only (possibly the only after Samus in Other M) who got to actually act like the male characters. She was bland in the same way that Master Chief and Marcus Fenix are, a way that female characters never really get to be. And she was utterly badass and confident.

Her original origin was awesome to me. She was a young, rich socialite whose plane crashlanded in the middle of nowhere. She went wandering through jungles and ruins and decided that holy crap, this right here is epic. I’m going to do THIS.

Are they seriously saying that they couldn’t have done something with that? That it needed some fucking Rape-Aid to be a great story?

And let’s not forget that whole ‘we’ll make her a hero and then break her down again’. Oh right, because screw having a strong hero, we need to protect this poor, helpless victim because she’s a godamn woman and we can’t possibly let her be tough! Oh no, we have to make you ‘root for her in a way that you might not root for a male character’, because fuck treating her like what she actually is; a badass.

The sad thing about Poison Study and the rest of that trilogy is that it’s still far, far superior to the sequel trilogy, the one that starts with Storm Glass. I mean, a trilogy where the happy and romantic ending (which nobody in-verse seem to have a problem with) for the heroine is marrying the guy who (among a few other things) abducted and tortured her as a child and later bodyswapped with her boyfriend to get to have sex with her (ie. rape), well – I’ve rarely felt so tempted to toss a book across the room. (Unless the author actually meant to write an amazing first person POV exploration of the sheer fucked-up-ness of Stockholm syndrome in a fantasy setting, but somehow, I suspect that would be giving her too much credit.)

That story about the 12 year old girl on transit in Montreal: shakes head. I’m currently having problems with discrimination on Montreal transit. They seem to have no clue whatsoever about accommodation. (Unlike the libraries, which are wonderful!) And the police. Oh, the police. They do have a bad reputation. They do seem to be earning it.

I once knew a Lakota woman with the same last name as the woman who started that Change.org petition. It’s weird how a campaign like this can be made personal so quickly by a detail like that. I don’t know if that makes me bad or just human.

The Lara Croft thing made me want to rip my hair out. First of all, the executive producer thinks that the inability to project oneself into a female character because “he” (it sounded like Rosenberg was assuming that all Lara Croft players were male) is too busy wanting to protect her is perfectly okay. He doesn’t seem to realize how negative this way of viewing women is; it’s something that should be challenged, not supported. Also, using rape as a way for (presumably) male gamers to get off a woman’s fear and trauma and as a way to feed into that supposed desire to protect her is absolutely appalling and rage-inducing.

Thanks for that article. It’s good to hear someone calling people out on this garbage.

Re: Poison Study – those reviews addressed some of the misgivings I had with that book; I doubt I will be finishing the series.
SPOILER: I was not incredibly pleased that Yelena and Valek got together. In fiction, I hate romantic relationships where there is a huge difference in power between the couple (especially when, in a heterosexual relationship, the man has the greater power). I prefer it when the lovers are on more equal footing. And when Valek told Yelena – in the midst of confessing his love for her – that he’d considered killing her twice because she was too much trouble (the whole quote is in the second review linked above), I cringed. A guy who tells a girl that he considered killing her at any point in their budding relationship does not exactly scream “potential lover” to me. The whole dynamic was just off.

The first comment on the Lara Croft post at Kotaku wins the internet. One of the very fine points it makes: there are plenty of ways to break a heroic character down, and we do love seeing that sometimes, but why does it always have to be rape if the hero is a she?

I seriously start grinding my teeth every time someone “de-boobs” a female character as short-hand for making her “tough” and “serious”

As a lady with rather large breasts I occasionally feel the need to punch something when people go on about how no one could possibly take a character like that seriously. I usually work it out by splitting wood, which I somehow manage on my own (I mean, it turns out that breasts don’t actually prevent you from stacking hay or hauling wood or engaging in difficult labor)

I mean, I’m all for diversity of body types in all media, but when the creators or owners of a property PROUDLY announce that they have toned down the boobage, it feels like a giant wink and nod to all the guys who they knew weren’t taking the character seriously at all.

Next time someone brings up how male and female superheros both have “unrealistic bodies” I’m going to ask about the last time that DC proudly announced that they were going to make Batman a more “serious” character by toning down his biceps a bit.

And is it just me or is it seriously skeevy that they are turning a rape scene into just another power fantasy for men? I mean, since in this instance the men will be playing a woman POV character, of course they are going to just kick the asses of anyone who tries anything! That’s all women need to do! I don’t know we don’t try that more often!

Sorry, but I get seriously ranty every time it is publicly announced that my body type can never be serious or badass or interesting or anything other than adolescent fantasy material.

SarahSyna: Lara Croft was one of the only (possibly the only after Samus in Other M) who got to actually act like the male characters. She was bland in the same way that Master Chief and Marcus Fenix are, a way that female characters never really get to be. And she was utterly badass and confident.

This is off-topic but I remember MovieBob/The Game Overthinker trying to defend Samus’ awful character derailment in Other M by saying if they didn’t make her all ~vulnerable~ she’d be (and I quote) “A COLD-HEARTED TERMINATRIX”
Seriously.

(He also thinks Pixar is AWESOME ‘cuz their stories primarily focus on MEN DOING MAN THINGS AND BONDING WITH THEIR SONS whereas the Disney animated canon is just too damn GIRLY with all those princesses n’ shit.)

So…basically what I’m saying is as much as I appreciated his “RAPE CULTURE IS UNACCEPTABLE IN GAMING CIRCLES” video, he’s not nearly as progressive when it comes to women’s issues as he likes to fancy himself.